Tatooine TV
"How funny would it be if Star Wars characters played a baseball game," that's how Jeff Roney began the trek to create the award-winning, Star Wars and more, audio parody show, Tatooine TV. 36 First run episodes HERE, and 12 live format shows HERE. One man show, pretty much. Tatooine TV was produced in an audio format, because I didn't have the money or crew to produce funny videos. In June 2003, Jeff booted up my Gateway with not near enough RAM, and bought Magix Music Studio, and realized he could mix multiple audio channels, and it sounded, okay. I found Nathan P. Butler during pre-launch of starwarsfanworks.com, and he waved my aboard. Scripts began to take shape, I recorded some voices, collected music, but I needed other voices. It took me spotting an X-Wing car to take us to the next level. Was that an X-Wing car? Jeff works in Santa Ana (When he's not flying all over the country to train people learning real estate software), and he remembers standing outside my office, and seeing an X-Wing car drive by. Now, he's a Star Wars fan, but had never seen that before. He scoured the internet and found the owner of said car, turns out he also was an actor, and kinda thought Jeff's scripts were funny. The merry band picked up more believers Jeff recruited as many crazy people who could understand the Star Wars and more pitch, William Lundin, a hard working computer system analyst was one, Jeff's wife, Colleen was another. Along the way, friends and relatives of co-workers added their vocal talents to Tat TV. Katy and Beth Tyszkiewicz passing an audio tape to their Mom, who brought it to me, Shawn Crosby sending his CD through the mail, we constantly thought outside the box to get people's line on some way to include it on the bits. It's Dead,It's Alive, It's Dead again Jeff had helpers along the way, but life, jobs and stardom drew them away, so mostly it fell to Jeff to "push the car uphill". He loved it, but the creative drain, recording voices, production, promotion takes it toll on anyone. Tatooine TV was put on hiatus, and given its last rites, at least once, and then something miraculous happened- John Cosper happened. Email One, "You're stuff is funny," Email Two, "I mean it, you're stuff is very funny," Email Three, "Wanna work together?" Just like George Lucas going back on his word, Jeff pulled Tatooine TV out of retirement when he discovered, John Cosper. John is like The Yeti, Nessie and Bigfoot rolled into one, a Christian with; 1. Great writing talent, and 2. An honest to goodness sense of humor. Tat TV pulled back into production for another burst of speed. The stories got more complex, the casts got larger, and there were multi-part stories, too. Oh yes, then there was our little "Ace," Ara. She's sounds more Tyra, then Tyra Jeff has a sense about people sometimes, and he knew that Ara would turn out to be very important to Tat TV. She answered a Casting Call in the Louisville Casting Yahoo group, she had desire, but no experience. Jeff worked with her passed issues like; Audacity, mic placement, background noise, etc, and she had a scary precise voice actress work ethic that would work on a voice and get so dead on, you'd think it was the actual actress. Ara is fan-tast-ic, just wait til you hear New World Army. A-maz-ing! All good Things, part 2 Jeff had ideas of doing more than Tatooine TV, and so Tatooine TV morphed into EarGiggles, a anything goes comedy show, but there was even more. Jeff also wanted a more serious, controversial show exploring issues that would scare more people that held his ideals, like; How should organized religion treat homosexuals, How should the church treat women who have abortions, Alcoholism, etc. RoneyZone Radio wasn't always serious topics, but it gave Jeff room to express himself outside the Star Wars box. Those two show caused Jeff to make a decision- Tat TV was done, but there would, of course, be more to this story. Live comedy could work, right? Talkshoe was a (at that time) new way to podcast, using a conference call blended with online chatting. Not a revelutionary idea, but different enough to get Jeff to think, "Hey, we can do some live SW stuff, and get ready for the final Tat TV Show. Britney Spears called in from rehab, An amorous Jedi betrothed his love to an unsuspecting Cortney Macht during an interview, etc, etc. Even these live show couldn't extend it, the end would come- on August 19, 2007. No one could stop it now. The end. For sure this time After months of publicizing, begging and planning, the Tat TV Final show began at 1:00 PM CA time. It actually went like clockwork. Old friends joined on the phone, others sent their thoughts via audio files, it was a bittersweet show. The highs, the lows, and then the end. Was it worth it? Jeff always look at Tat TV as an experiment. Could he produce a multi-episode Star Wars and more comedy show, that weaved into the podcast "thang"? The two answers; Yes, he could, and Yes, it was worth it. Jeff still looks at the downloads every week on talkshoe.com, and its 150 a week for all the shows. Now, keep in mind he hasn't produced or promoted the show since its final epsiode on August 19, 2007. It does say something, doesn't it? Category:Audio Parodies